Learning from the Past
Working on a pro bono project called MARIO (Massive Anti-Racist I-O) I found myself deep in multicultural organization literature of the past - specifically an article written in 1988. While reading I couldn't help but feel sorrowful for its continued relevancy. According to Jackson and Holvino (1988), due to a resurgence of racism (remember this is 1988) they learned that individual consciousness-raising strategies has only limited success while lasting social justice change requires focus on organization as system. As organizations are starting to increase D&I efforts, it feels as though offering implicit bias training and book clubs focused on "White Fragility" is the answer (instead of a first step). How many organizations are following up these activities with changes to the organizational components (like policies or decision rights) and employee lifecycle (like selection or succession planning) in support of marginalized groups? And then how might the changes be institutionalized? This is important because the strategy to becoming a Multicultural Organization "shifts from targeting change at the individual level, to targeting change at the system level to targeting change at the interface between organization and environment” (Jackson, pg 16).
Another lesson disclosed in the article is that there is evidence showing a direct relationship between "delivery of quality and quantity of the product or service an organization delivers and the ability of that organization to provide a just working environment for all its employees” (Jackson, pg. 14). If progress and productivity go hand in hand, then why do companies continue ignoring the evidence, enabling inequitable systems? Besides the negative impact on marginalized communities what are we sacrificing by holding on to a white supremacist's culture?
Learning as a Change Mechanism for Multicultural Organizations
Another aspect of the article that struck me was that in order to become a multicultural organization, a learning capacity needs to be enabled - a collective mechanism to increase organizational learning. The Director of my MS program, who is also working on MARIO pointed out that Learning was missing from the current MARIO framework. I offered an idea that it could replace the title Training & Development with Learning & Development. She offered a cautious reminder that -I-O tends to approach training with more specificity around technique/design/delivery than learning. As I reflected on both the reading and her point, I was reminded that as a society when we hear learning, we think....classroom. However, learning goes beyond training; its about reflection and experience; processing memories into narratives that impact how we perceive, think and behave in the world. Learning, not just training, is core to creating equitable systems, yet even those is our field (and myself) failed to fully recognize its importance.
Although I write this article with a pessimistic perspective, in the middle of reading, I set it down and googled it (because my copy did not have a publishing date). While this work provides valuable insight into " new views of social change", it was clear to me that it was outdated, that we have made progress.
References:
Jackson, B. W., & Holvino, E. (1988). Developing Multicultural Organizations.
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